Tupaia had not bothered to lie on that subject. He knew no more than they. There had been an hour of dreadful pain, the raw torture of senses he didn't have, in limbs and organs he did not possess. It was obvious that something frightful had happened to his distant, alien owner. No doubt it had died. At least the pain had stopped, and where that inner tyrant had occupied his mind there was suddenly a blessed emptiness; Te'ehala Tupaia was himself again.
And would be free, too, as soon as he had disposed of this new crew of tormentors! Of achieving that he was quite confident. Physically the creatures looked formidable, particularly the hissing metal robot and the thing that looked like a gross, hovering blue eye, crackling with electrical forces, that they called a Sirian. But physical odds he could overcome.
What then?
Even Te'ehala Tupaia was forced to admit to himself that the way was unclear before him. He would have to wait and be ready for whatever opportunity presented itself . . .
And then he understood what the creatures were doing, and the opportunity became almost at hand; for the queer metal devices in the chamber were weapons!
He even understood what they needed a human being for. The weapons were ill-suited to their owners. "Owners" seemed the wrong word, in fact; the creatures were almost as awkward with them as Tupaia himself, as if they had never seen them until just recently. Certainly the handles and grips and levers were designed for beings with fingers and hands—although not, perhaps, the fingers and hands of human beings. Tupaia's fingers were too short, and the grips seemed made for creatures with more than a single thumb. Yet he could manage, and they could not. They ordered him to pick up one of the pieces, a silver-gray onion-shaped device, a globular mass coming to a sharp point at one end; it had a double butt, making it even more awkward. When he raised it to his shoulders it was too narrow to fit properly on his huge torso, and his clumsiness with the finger grips made the alien creatures scatter in consternation.
That was when he realized it was a weapon. They snatched it away from him and jerked the Pmal off his neck, gabbling among themselves in hiss and drum-roll and screech. Without the Pmal he could not understand a word—as they had intended—but he didn't care. His mind was bursting with the realization that here was a chance he had never dreamed of. Weapons of an alien science! If he could steal them— If he could get them to the tachyon transmitter and smuggle them back to Earth— If he could evade the guards at the Tachyon Center and deliver them to the other warriors in New Guinea or Rabaul—
There would be a way. There had to be!
But it was slow to appear.
They kept him there for endless hours, without rest or respite. They threw the Pmal at him from time to time, long enough to convey quick, curt orders commanding him to manipulate strange controls on even stranger devices, then retired once more for their interminable secret gabbles. After the first time they were wary of letting him have free access to a hand weapon, and even warier of some of the huger, stranger devices. But they had to learn how to operate them, and he was their only learning tool. There was a device like an organ keyboard attached to a great, solid, translucent block; under their instructions he pressed keys and twisted curious, helical levers, and for a long time nothing happened.
Then something did.
The glassy block began to light up with an eye-searing pinkish glow, while a thin, high sound grew louder and deeper, running down the scale. The aliens reacted with quick fear. The Sheliak's tentacles snatched Tupaia's fingers off the keys while the robot lunged at what seemed to be the starting switch. For a moment Tupaia thought they had been too late, as the glow built higher for a second. Then it wavered, faded, and disappeared.
They never let him touch that one again.
While they were debating, Tupaia became conscious of bodily needs. He approached the Sheliak, took the Pmal, and through it asked for food, water, rest. The answer, once again, was the Pinal's equivalent of contemptuous laughter. Tupaia stolidly let them take the translator away. His time would come. He would make it come.
He could find nothing to eat, but there was a globe of a thin, sour liquid enough like drinking water to serve, and a corner in which he relieved himself. The aliens paid no attention. He squatted by the door, watching everything, seeking the vagrant thoughts that would turn into a plan. He was certainly in a far better position than when he had been owned. The purchasers of Purchased People generally treated them as expendable. If they wanted to eat or sleep or relieve their bladders, they could. As long as there were no prior orders from the owner. Which was seldom. Here the only force imposed on him was physical. And by comparison, physical constraints were nothing.
After Tupaia's arrest and conviction, it had been only a few days until the prison authorities had struck their bargain for another batch of convicts sold to the aliens. Which aliens, or for what purpose, no one seemed to care. There had been a brief surgical operation—strapped immobile to the table Tupaia could not see what was happening behind his ear, or feel more than an itching tingle through the local anesthesia—and then the owner was inside his head. Terrible! It was not like one-to-one communication. The owner was immeasurably distant, and even tachyons took finite time to traverse interstellar spaces. But it laid its geases on him, and sampled his senses, and it was always there . . .
He was allowing himself to daydream!
He roused himself just as the screeching and rattling of the aliens rose to a high pitch and stopped, and they turned back to their project. Tupaia watched carefully as the Scorpian and the Sheliak examined the hand weapons. The robot picked up the onion-shaped weapon apprehensively, while the Sheliak nervously hissed advice. If they were foolish enough to put it in his hands again, even for a moment . . .
That foolish they were not.
As the robot awkwardly fitted his clawlike metal feelers onto the grip and braced the twin butts against his metal body, the Purchased Person, Te'ehala Tupaia, realized tardily that he was meant to serve more purposes than one. Not just to help them learn how to operate the weapons. To do something more important still. Because how could you know if a weapon was effective until you tried it on a living target?
The onion-shaped globe came up with the point aimed straight at Tupaia. A greenish glow sprang out around the globe, collected itself toward the tip, launched itself toward him.
As the green blob of light spun toward his head he realized that he had waited too long to make a move; and that was the last thought that ever flickered through the mind of that particular Te'ehala Tupaia.
ELEVEN
I wake, and the waking is not easy this time. For I am afraid.
Something is moving inside the sacred structure of HIS being, shielded from my knowledge and my control. Someone is prying into the forbidden secrets, seeking powers that belong to HIM alone. Someone is discovering the secret state of the matter that can exist as neither solid nor liquid, gas or plasma, but forms into atoms larger than stars. Someone is using the old weapons to violate HIS precious fabric itself.